1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multi-node system, an internodal crossbar switch, a node and a medium embodying program, and more particularly to a multi-node system, an internodal crossbar switch, a node and a medium embodying program in which it is possible to prevent a system down even if a fault occurs in one crossbar switch.
2. Description of the Related Art
To cope with the yearly increasing demands for improving the calculation performance in the field of the science and technology calculation, the performance improvement as the entire system is achieved by connecting two or more high performance nodes composed of two or more CPUs and shared memory. In this case, though the connection between nodes is made via an internodal controller installed in each node and transferring data and an internodal crossbar switch for transferring data between nodes, there was a problem that the node broke down, if a fault occurred in the internodal controller or the crossbar switch.
A technology as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-256203 involves a system in which the crossbar switch connects between nodes. This system installs the N+1 crossbar switches, including one redundant switch, between the N nodes. If a fault processing circuit of this system recognizes the fault of the crossbar switch when a system failure occurs, this fault processing circuit controls a selection circuit provided in the input/output part of the crossbar switch, and stops the use of the crossbar switch where the fault occurs.
After the re-start-up system, the operation that evades the crossbar switch with the fault can be done according to the above-mentioned technology, when the fault occurs in the crossbar switch that connects between nodes by assuming the crossbar switch to be a redundant configuration. When the fault does not occur, the redundant crossbar switch is not used.
Moreover, the technology as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-46526, a plurality of internodal controllers are provided in connected part between <internodal crossbar switch for the data transfer between nodes> and each node, varying the forwarding performance between nodes according to the performance of the processor within the node.
According to the above-mentioned technology, the forwarding performance between nodes is varied, and even if one internodal controller breaks down, another internodal controller can continuously drive the system.